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Hanging Together (RLG)
Past Forward: One Library
July 19, 2013 - 11:03amThis is the first in a series on the OCLC Research Library Partnership meeting, Past Forward.
Past Forward, a meeting for the OCLC Research Library Partnership was held last month, June 4-5 (with a pre-meeting workshop on June 3rd). We’ve just posted the videos and other outputs for the meeting, and it falls to me to summarize the meeting and outcomes. But how to capture such a rich experience? This wasn’t just a meeting, it was the best meeting we’ve ever had (and that’s not just me talking, I have feedback from a survey to back me up). Instead of summarizing chronologically, as I usually do, I’m going to call out some themes that surfaced during the meeting. The overall theme for Past Forward was “managing special collections in the 21st century” (and the workshop was on outreach — teaching, fundraising, and connecting on campus — for special collections). Naturally, I anticipated that outcomes would cleave to special collections. I was surprised to find that they were really much broader. See what you think and if you attended the meeting in person or online (or watched the videos) please contribute your comments!
From Rachel Beckett’s presentation — staff special collections vision exercise
One Library
It was during the pre-meeting workshop that it hit me. Lance Heidig’s presentation centered on his relatively novel position at Cornell University, which integrates special collections and general library instruction. This makes all kinds of sense, because this has got to be the way that most library patrons (faculty, students, other researchers) approach their own work. I think it’s probably quite rare that research includes only primary source material or things found in special collections without also citing secondary literature (monographs, journals and the like). So why do we isolate special collections teaching from the teaching about the general collections?
It’s a good question, and the notion of integrating special collections into the broader library surfaced in more than just this one presentation. Robyn Holmes (National Library of Australia), Rachel Beckett (Manchester University), and Mike Furlough (Pennsylvania State University) each hit on the notion of a more incorporated special collections in their presentations in the “Repositioning Special Collections” panel. A the University of Manchester, staff identified gaps in engagement and support for learners and support for research: part of the remedy has been for special collections to sit on committees to address these issues. At the National Library of Australia, repositioning goes a step further, with a single reading room for all formats embodying their “one library” concept. Too, the library is emphasizing shared systems for description and processing of collections, trying to get away from “special” ways of dealing with collections and introduce more common processes. Mike Furlough’s presentation highlighted an external review of special collections, but also emphasized PSU’s organizational structure, in which special collections is in the same administrative unit as digitization & preservation and publishing & curation services, which both has the potential to bring special collections closer to the end products in scholarly communications and also allows for sister units to more easily capitalize on skills of special collections staff.
This notion of getting out of your four walls was taken a step further in Lisa Carter’s presentation on advocacy — she urges special collections to connect more directly with the missions and priorities of their parent institutions, acknowledging that it’s not just special collections must serve the larger needs of the whole.
You can find Heidig and Carter’s presentations on the workshop page; the presentations from the panel on “repositioning” can be found on the Past Forward event page. You might also enjoy the videos from the meeting.
I’ll be back next week with another theme, finding new ways forward.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Visualizing Network Flows: Library Inter-lending
July 12, 2013 - 8:31pm
As part of our joint research project with the CIC Center for Library Initiatives and the OSU Library, we’re examining inter-lending flows within and outside of the 13-member CIC consortium. We are using a subset of the OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing (WCRS) transaction data archive for this analysis. Our current data-set comprises 1.33 million request transactions, representing nearly 900,0000 individual titles loaned by CIC libraries over the past several years.
As Max Klein has noted elsewhere in this blog, the OCLC Research group is starting to experiment with new approaches to data visualization using the R statistical modeling environment and D3 JavaScript code library. (The WorldCat Live prototype is a nice example of how these are being put to use.) We are eager to integrate some of this experimental work into the ongoing CIC analysis.
Bruce Washburn, Brian Lavoie and I met recently to look at examples in Mike Bostock’s D3 gallery, which provides some great examples of how different visualization techniques can be implemented. We were looking for examples that were fit to purpose for this particular project. Since inter-lending is a library-centric approach to balancing supply and demand, Brian suggested that we focus on examples that are particularly expressive for modeling import/export flows. We settled on force-directed graphs and Sankey flow diagrams as good candidates for further exploration. And because we are especially interested in understanding the flow of library resources across geographies, we decided it was worth some additional work to enhance our WCRS transaction dataset with geo-codes, so that we can experiment with mapping flows across regions.
From his experiments with TopicWeb, Bruce has developed some facility with D3 and he is now doing some work with R. But before we run head-long into any new development work, I wanted to do some low-level experimentation to see if the data we have in hand, and the questions we are trying to answer, lend themselves to visualization in Sankey diagrams.
When Brian, Bruce and I met to discuss models, we spent a fair bit of time discussing this diagram of horse import/export activity in Europe. It wasn’t until this week that I realized it had been produced by the prolific blogger and Open Data advocate Tony Hirst (aka @psychemedia, whom I’ve followed on Twitter for a long while) as an experiment in formatting data for Sankey diagrams. His blog post on this topic is great — unfortunately, it’s way beyond my current skill to implement. But in the comments, I noted that Bruce Mcpherson had developed some VBA code that uses Excel as the data input to a D3 Sankey library. This was just what I needed for some quick experimentation with our current data set.
Here are a few illustrative screenshots:
The three-letter symbols correspond to OCLC institution symbols for the 29 CIC collections we are examining in this project.
Another, showing the breakdown of CIC borrowing of CIC returnables:
And a third, this time with some detail for both Non-CIC and CIC borrowers — NB the number of non-CIC borrowers makes it difficult to represent them all in this format, hence the block of ‘others.’
Now, these are admittedly primitive pictures of how resources flow out of CIC libraries and into other places — but they do capture some important attributes that we are interested to explore further. For instance, it is immediately apparent that there are some major ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’ for CIC returnables. And it’s clear that while the demand generated outside the CIC is significant (greater than the demand generated within the consortium), it is extremely diffuse — spread across a population of thousands of libraries. Both of these are important for understanding for how existing library flows can be optimized. As we refine our analysis, we’ll be examining what factors are driving demand to particular libraries: proximity of lender, scarcity of alternative supply options, price incentives, efficiency of service (as measured by turn-around) , etc. And we’ll be looking at new ways to use data visualization to explore — and share — interesting and important patterns in the organization of the library system.
Update: Thanks to Tony Hirst’s comment (below) and some subsequent Twitter exchanges with @timelyportfolio,
@psychemedia @ramnath_vaidya @ConstanceM sankey plugin is my next project similar to horizon
— klr (@timelyportfolio) July 13, 2013
there is now a very nice tutorial on creating Sankey diagrams using rCharts and d3. Many thanks to klr and Tony for taking the initiative.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
User studies and risks for research libraries?
July 8, 2013 - 8:39pmThis is the first in a series of posts that synthesize conclusions of published user studies about desires and needs for research support. I’ve collected quite a stack of them. For the past three years I’ve been reading up on what academics themselves say about all this. Along the way, I’ve also gathered studies that include administrators and librarians. When the latest Ithaka US and UK faculty surveys came out this spring[1], I integrated their findings into my growing pile of evidence.
The cumulative effect is rather foreboding. Academic libraries appear to be somewhat out of touch with the needs of researchers. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The typical library often does not provide the support that researchers need to do their research. As a result, researchers report not being as well-served as they should be, and in their eyes academic libraries are losing relevance.
Today’s synthesis introduces user studies about risks for research libraries, especially the risk of doing nothing. In separate future posts I’ll focus on what researchers themselves say. If I get ambitious, I may delve into to user studies with university administrators and – last but not least – librarians.
Why user studies?
Many leaders of research libraries are concerned that their institutions have become less relevant to faculty members and academics, whether due to advances in technology, success in licensing journals, or over-investment in teaching services for undergraduates at the expense of research. In the current context of disintermediation of libraries – combined with constraints on funding – administrators at research-intensive universities perceive that libraries are presently at risk. Internationally, significant attention has been given to demonstrating the value and ‘business’ of libraries to universities and funding agencies. Managing research information – whether research data, articles, or administrative information about researchers and their work – has recently become a strategy for libraries to weave themselves into the fabric of the research lifecycle, in order to demonstrate their value and mitigate risk of losing relevance and funding.
To re-establish the research libraries’ alignment with research needs, the community has called for investment in developing new services that support research workflows and university administrations. Considerable thought has been given to the nature and function of such new services. National and institutional initiatives have enabled a handful of research libraries to spend significant resources planning and developing up-to-date research services.
For years, librarians have called for studies that articulate what researchers desire by way of support for their research.[2] These blog posts are my meta-analysis of the results of some 30+ years of studies – including recent reports from RIN, Ithaka, OCLC Research, and the DCC – in order to gather together evidence of system-wide needs for research services, both within and outside libraries. Of course, methodologies used to generate the numerous studies vary, such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups. Also, the objectives of the various projects are different, so exact or parallel comparisons are difficult and the conclusions are not necessarily overlapping or consistent.
Nevertheless, clear trends and distinct patterns emerge from the body of work as a whole. Recent research on scholarly behavior converges on conclusions about all manner of information-related services in universities and across academic disciplines. Qualitative and quantitative studies of scholars and academic administrators provide a mountain of evidence about the nature of services and infrastructure required to span the entire lifecycle of the fruits of research. While we have witnessed simultaneous evolution of discipline-based and institution-based services, diverse international reports have identified gaps in digital infrastructure and provision of services to manage research information, both by libraries and by university administrations.
Risks: disintermediation, funding, value
Martin Feijen, in a literature review from the Dutch SURFfoundation titled What researchers want, gleans the crux of the matter: “There is one very concise statement about risk: ‘The biggest risk is to do nothing.’”[3]
In the spring of 2008, before the economic crash, OCLC Research commissioned a business-style risk assessment with 15 library directors in ARL and the RLG Partnership (as it was called then). The highest risk we identified concerns “the uncertain library value proposition.” Jim, Constance and Arnold conclude that this risk weakens visibility and thus the value of the library, and our user base erodes because of the library’s uncertain value proposition. Their essay recommends that libraries restructure traditional workflows, “in favor of a new emphasis on and investment in research support services.” Investing in research services should refocus the library’s agenda on “improvement of the research enterprise they serve.”[4]
It is not news that research libraries are currently at risk due to changes in funding, technology, and research. According to Ithaka’s 2009 survey of researchers, academic libraries are increasingly being disintermediated from the discovery process.[5] Librarians’ own evidence shows that the library is being bypassed and displaced.[6] Michael Jubb has analyzed statistical trends in libraries’ declining share of university budgets in a digital environment. Jubb articulates challenges related to disintermediation: “developing and enhancing relationships with their users, and developing new services to maximise their value to users.”[7]
Concerns such as these, about perceptions of how irrelevant libraries seem, appear in several reports. First, what do we mean by ‘value’? The value of libraries for research and researchers (a recent report commissioned by RIN and RLUK, based on interviews and focus groups with researchers, chancellors, research support administrators, deans, finance directors and librarians) defines value as “the direct and indirect benefits of libraries, actual and perceived.” The report, however, elides two different meanings of the word ‘value’: “the value of any library is inextricably linked to the values of the university” (emphasis mine).[8] In the singular, the ‘value’ of the library is its usefulness and worth, while the ‘values’ of the university – in the plural – are intellectual ideals and academic standards. In this construct, libraries are justifiably worried about being seen worthy of funding, while universities are concerned with principles, such as ethical and social benefits of research and education.
RIN and RLUK stress that the case for libraries must be made from evidence. One example of bellwether evidence is a negative correlation between research performance and the volume of serials and electronic databases.[9] If library collections no longer seem essential to scholarly research, how can a library realign with the institution’s mission and evolving needs of researchers?
In this precarious context, the value of academic libraries to both universities and researchers is not clear. ACRL has contributed a monumental literature review about the value of research libraries.[10] In one attempt to remedy the risk, RIN’s Ensuring a bright future essay warns that libraries and information services are critical to national and institutional success in research.[11] Based on the results of the RIN’s monumental survey Researchers’ use of academic services and their libraries[12], RIN’s essay directly addresses vice-chancellors and senior managers in research settings. The anxious tone of the title alone suggests some nervousness about the future of academic libraries.
Next up: User studies with academics and faculty members.
[1] Housewright, Ross, Roger C. Schonfeld and Kate Wulfson. 2013. Ithaka S+R US faculty survey 2012. Housewright, Ross, Roger C. Schonfeld and Kate Wulfson. 2013. Ithaka S+R/Jisc/RLUK UK survey of academics 2012.
[2] Brown, Sheridan and Alma Swan (Key Perspectives). 2007. Researchers’ use of academic libraries and their services: a report commissioned by the Research Information Network and the Consortium of Research Libraries, page 68.
[3] Feijen, Martin. 2011. What researchers want: A literature study of researchers’ requirements with respect to storage and access to research data, page 25. Utrecht: SURFfoundation.
[4] Michalko, James, Constance Malpas and Arnold Arcolio. 2010. Research libraries, risk and systemic change, pages 11, 14, 19.
[5] Schonfeld, Roger and Ross Housewright. 2010. Ithaka S+R faculty survey 2009: key strategic insights for libraries, publishers, and societies, page 2.
[6] Brown and Swan, 2007, pages 7, 20.
[7] Jubb, Michael. 2010. “Challenges for libraries in difficult economic times: evidence from the UK.” LIBER quarterly 20(2) (October), page 132.
[8] Curtis+Cartwright Consulting Limited. 2011. The Value of libraries for research and researchers: a RIN and RLUK report, pages 8, 10.
[9] Cartwright+Curtis, 2011, pages 57, 58. (contra Tenopir, Carol et al. 2010. University investment in the library, phase II: an international study of the library’s value to the grants process.) Brown and Swan, 2007, page 32 notes slight use of full-text articles despite demand.
[10] Oakleaf, Megan. 2010. Value of academic libraries: a comprehensive research review and report.
[11] Research Information Network (RIN). 2008. Ensuring a bright future for libraries: a guide for vice-chancellors and senior institutional managers.
[12] Brown and Swan, 2007.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Sex Ratios in Wikidata, Wikipedias, and VIAF part 2
June 19, 2013 - 6:25pmNow that VIAFbot has finished importing VIAF IDs into Wikidata, I wanted to demonstrate what kind of work could be done with those connections. In March, using Wikidata, I investigated the sex ratios of different Wikipedias. I compared the Wikidata Items that used the semantic property ‘sex’ to which Wikipedia language versions contained those items. (If you’re getting confused by the jargon, I give explanations in this YouTube tutorial.) It turned out to be a flattering affair for the Tagalog and Chinese Wikipedias whose sex ratios were the most even, albeit at 29.4% and 20.6% female respectively. Another interesting finding was that some of the items that had the ‘sex’ property, also had the ‘VIAF’ property – a link into the VIAF database. The national libraries contributing to VIAF also record the sex of certain entities, which means that new comparisons are possible.
The way this bot worked was to first make a query as to all the Wikidata items that had the VIAF property. There are 388,829 such Wikidata items as of 18 June 2013. Each of them contains a VIAF ID, which can then be made into the URI of the record at VIAF.org. At the VIAF.org record we can get VIAF’s opinion on the sex. That opinion is a result of a behind-the-scenes merge of all the national library files. Unfortunately with such a merge not all the data and its provenance is preserved. But because we live in a linked data era, it’s possible to follow links out of VIAF into the online databases of the contributing libraries. Here I used the Library of Congress because I like their data model for dealing with complex sex cases. Library of Congress will record multiple sexes with applicable dates if they exist, which is a step in the right direction compared to the problematic binary (well trinary) Wikidata model. Then I had 3 data sources which we can compare. The rule I used was that specific information from Library of Congress trumped the merged information on VIAF. Then we take that single ruling library opinion and hold it to Wikidata. If the opinions matched I added a source to the Wikidata claim, if no Wikidata opinion exists I added a sourced claim. In the cases where Wikidata and VIAF disagreed with one another I made a list. Lets take a look at how often each of those cases occurred.
As I mentioned our entire eligible data set consists of 388,829 Wikidata items that have the ‘VIAF’ property. Of those there is a subset which have Wikidata sex data, and VIAF sex data. That subset totals 131,650. Reassuringly only .2% of this subset disagree. For each of those 311 items in that .2% a bit of hunting should be able to right it. For instance the Deutsche National Bibliothek thinks Nadine Warmuth is male, but Wikidata thinks female. On the other hand, Wikidata thinks that Nguyen Thi Binh is female, but VIAF suggests otherwise.
There are also instances where we don’t have two sources to conflict with each other. There were 125,781 times when Wikidata had sex data that VIAF did not. Maybe this is a case where libraries could glean a datum or two. Certainly Wikidata was pleased to be informed in the 44,526 scenarios where VIAF or LoC had sex information but VIAF not.
Lastly, and just for perspective, each time I handled any sex information I kept track of the content as well. 257,431 of the Wikidata items had sex data and split to 14.7% female, 85.3% male, and 0.002% “Intersex”. (The strict classification system that has this poorly named “other” category is a problem I’ve talked about before.) The sex data that came from VIAF showed a very similar story at 14.6% / 85.4% / .006% female / male / “nuanced” even at a lower sample size of 176,187. It goes to show that sex data as a whole in both Wikidata is skewed. At least now there is more of it, and it has a citation.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
WorldCat Linked Data Made More Easily Available to Software
June 3, 2013 - 3:46pmYou may recall that a while back we announced that linked data had been added to WorldCat.org web pages. If you scroll down when viewing a single record you can reveal a “Linked Data” section of the page that is human readable and also “scrapable” via software.
However, it is much easier for software to request a structured data version that does not contain all of the other HTML markup of the page. The best way to do this is through something called “content negotiation”. Basically it enables a requestor (that is, a software program) to send a request that also tells the web server which format is required. For example, if you want a representation of the data in the Javascript Standard Notation (JSON) format, which many software developers use, then you could issue a command such as this:
curl -L -H “Accept: application/ld+json” http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41266045And that is what you would get in return. Alternatively, you could simply request that format by using the appropriate filename extension:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41266045.jsonld
Formats supported include RDF XML, JSON, and Turtle. Richard Wallis has written a more thorough description of this that can be very helpful in understanding how best to use this new service.
These changes make it much easier and faster to get the data a developer requires into their application in a highly usable way. We can’t wait to see what they do with it.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Pinch Me. I’m Dreaming.
May 30, 2013 - 7:40pm
I was a library assistant at a community college in California when the microcomputer Commodore PET was released. At the time I was starting to think about going to college to get a library degree. To be clear, I first needed to get my B.A. as I had not gone to college out of high school (I was actually a high school dropout, but that’s a long story). Since libraries were all about information, and computers excelled in processing information, it seemed obvious to me that I needed to learn how to use computers.
That began my lifelong relationship with computers, since I wrote my very first software program on that Commodore PET, stored on a cassette tape, in the early 1980s. It was a library orientation tutorial.
From there, I minored in computer science and majored in geography at Humboldt State University. As an assistant to a geography professor there I wrote statistical analysis programs in FORTRAN and took classes in COBOL and Pascal. These were batch systems, where you submitted your job and waited for it to be run at the whim of the operators. The largest computer I ever used at Humboldt in the 80s is now far eclipsed in both power and storage by the phone in my pocket.
At UC Berkeley, where I received my MLS in 1986 and worked for 15 years, I made the acquaintance of UNIX and online time sharing computing. What a breakthrough that was. You could write and run a program immediately and get instant feedback. For a lousy code jockey like me, it was heaven. I didn’t have to wait to find out I had left out a semicolon.
So fast forward to today. Earlier today I kicked off a computing job on the OCLC Research compute cluster that took 4 minutes and 19 seconds to complete. At first that sounds like a long time, until you find out what it did. The job located 129 MARC records out of nearly 300 million that had the text string “rdacontnet”. It did this without indexes or databases. 300 million MARC records are sitting out on spinning disks somewhere in Ohio and from California I searched every byte of those records for a specific text string and it completed in less than 5 minutes. Pinch me. I’m dreaming.
Photo courtesy of Don DeBold, Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
ISBNs in WorldCat
May 23, 2013 - 9:48pmRecently a question came up on the BIBFRAME list about ISBNs, and how many of them were in MARC records. This is just the kind of question that OCLC Research is uniquely placed to answer, so I quickly wrote some simple Perl code to run as a Hadoop streaming job to find out.
It was remarkably quick and easy to find out, although I had to edit and re-run the code when I discovered a flaw in my logic. This is, sadly, all too frequently the case. But not too much later I had my result:
Occurrences # per Record Percent of WC 230444194 0 77.71% 55668178 2 18.77% 4766652 1 1.61% 3708352 4 1.25% 616623 3 0.21% 411230 6 0.14% 125715 8 0.04% 65796 5 0.02% 45304 10 0.02% 30155 12 0.01%These are all of the occurrences of a 020 $a in WorldCat as of 1 May 2013 [Added for clarification: the prior sentence describes exactly what is being counted. That is, I am not (yet) examining ISBNs for 10-digit vs. 13-digit; therefore, many of the records with 2 ISBNs may in fact simply have both versions]. A few observations:
- Many items in WorldCat were published before the invention of the ISBN.
- Many items in WorldCat are not ISBN-appropriate (e.g., unpublished materials).
- ISBNs are therefore problematic as identifiers except for a narrow slice of materials (mainly printed books since the mid-60s).
A much better identifier for many purposes is, I assert, the OCLC number.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Sex Ratios in Wikidata, Wikipedias, and VIAF
May 13, 2013 - 1:33pmLast week I wrote about the ‘rope bridge’ between Wikidata and VIAF, and the new research it would afford. Today I bring you a sample of that research. I am investigating the sex associated with different Wikipedia Biography Articles for two reasons. Firstly, the Properties “Sex” and “VIAF” are two of the top 10 most used Wikidata Properties, with Sex at 587,312 items tagged, and VIAF with 301,763 (and rising, VIAFbot hasn’t finished scraping all languages yet). VIAF independently records sex per VIAF item, which gives us two comparable datasets. Secondly, after the so-called “Categorygate” piece in the New York Times I dug into Wikidata’s Sex Property and wanted to shed some light on the model currently in use.
Currently the Wikidata Property for Sex states:
Sex for humans, should be one of male, female , intersex, or the special “unknown” value
Finding this to be a rather rigid view of the world I started discussing it on the Discussion Page as per protocol. Of note, on the other hand is how VIAF records “gender” not “sex.” The current VIAF data model similarly limits values to male, female, or unknown but a change to a more nuanced model is planned for June. Its worth reminding that VIAF is populated with data from the many authority files it aggregates. One underlying authority file, which has a more nuanced view on this recording, is the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). The LCCN will record many “sexes” for a specific person with accompanying dates of validity. This at least shows that there are better ways of recording sex – if its necessary to record it at all – which prompts me to invite your input on the Wikidata Discusison Page about better ways to record sex. With that said, lets dig into some graphs. (Click to see larger versions.)
Sex Ratios by LanguageThe method used to perform this visualization is to view all the Wikidata items with Property:Sex and then look at the inter-language link section of the item to see which languages have articles relating to this item. Dividing along the lines of language, we can find sex ratios per language. Below shows each language with more than 1,000 articles tagged with sex data, sorted by the percentage of Female values.
Wikidata Sex Ratios By Language, Minimum 1000 Items
If you’re not well versed in Wikidata’s use of language codes, you can look them up. And if you’ve never browsed the winning and losing htwiki and tlwiki, the Haitian and Tagalog Wikipedias, then you can peruse the list containing minimum 10,000 Items with Sex Data.
Wikidata Sex Ratios By Language, Minimum 10000 Items
Two notable things arise here. Firstly, Chinese Wikipedia is seemingly the most progressive. Secondly The Intersex category fails to score a single pixel of recognition. In fact the Wikipedia with the highest ratio of Intersex values – as determined by Wikidata – is Korean Wikipedia, but at just 0.0078%.
Data CaveatsIs this data reliable? A lot of it was imported from the German and other major Wikipedias. That can be a problem, because for any given Wikipedia Language there exists articles that have no linked equivalents in other languages. There may very well be Wikipedias with more or less skewed sex ratios, but they haven’t migrated their sex data to Wikidata, or they have no equivalent article in a language which has migrated its sex data. Lets see which languages have the most articles associated with sex data, of those above 1,000.
Total Number of Wikidata Items Tagged with Sex
Unsurprisingly we get a very Western view of the world. But wait, there are other data sources to corroborate against; that was one of the points of VIAFbot importing VIAF IDs into Wikidata. Let’s imagine an enhanced version of Wikidata, that uses VIAF sex data in addition to what’s currently tagged, using that VIAF ID bridge. I ran simulation of such enhanced version of Wikidata, but before we look at it, lets understand VIAF’s own biases.
Introducing VIAFVIAF IDs have gender info derived from National Library files. There’s hope this may give us a different picture because VIAFs may be ever slightly less severe in its skew, although looking at its list of contributors reveals also a Western bias. Of ~24 Million VIAF records (not all about people) 1,299,396 have gender “male,” and 418,394 have gender “female.” This comes out to a percentage of 24.35% female. (Unfortunately VIAF doesn’t note directly where LCCN has a more nuanced view, but it can be determined by crawling the RDF link to LCCN’s Marc XML which I explain later.) Now to compare the Wikidata and VIAF-enhanced-Wikidata sex ratios we overlay the two graphs. Here wherever you see light green that means that Wikidata’s data alone gave a higher female ratio, and where you see red, VIAF-enhanced-Wikidata data gives a higher female ratio.
Comparison of Wikidata Sex Ratios with and Without VIAF by Language, Minimum 1000 Items with sex
Reassuringly VIAF and Wikidata only disagreed on 0.0024% of 91,406 matches. There were seven cases where LCCN did have with multiple sexes and qualifying dates. Furthermore there are 52,407 cases where VIAF has Sex data but Wikidata does not. This might be a good juncture to import that data, if the Wikidata community wants.
ConclusionsThere are articles in Wikidata which are not currently tagged with sex information, but whose sex information can be programmatically determined. There is some indication that tagging more articles would tend to produce more even sex ratios in Wikidata. If that were true, it would mean that “male” articles are more likely to be associated with sex data, though we cannot be positive about that claim. Finally recall that Wikidata’s data model for sex could also use some attention, and you the community are the instruments for that.
Software usedI wrote some simple scripts to crawl Wikidata and compare it VIAF and LCCN, its on GitHub, and I also modified code from the Wikidata community for parsing dumps which I plan to contribute back.
Did you find anything confusing? Leave your comments below or find me online. On twitter I’m @notconfusing.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
The Ropebridges: Authority Control in Wikidata
May 9, 2013 - 12:02pmYou may recall that our Wikipedia reciprocal linking robot “VIAFbot” finished adding Authority Control to more than a quarter of a million (English language) Wikipedia articles, but what was the utility? Five months on, that question has been answered. Luckily, and unsurprisingly, other netizens proved additional Wikipedia -> VIAF linking utility. Unanticipated reuse is the magic of collaborative and open datasets, and four such examples highlight the benefits of Library data in Wikipedia.
First was John Mark Ockerbloom’s Forward To Libraries which proposes “find in a Library” boxes in Wikipedia pages. The idea is compelling: facilitate automatic searches in your preferred library site on the topics of Wikipedia articles — one option utilizes VIAF IDs.
Similar look-up facilities were created by Owen Stephens and Thomas Meehan conducting pointed inquiry at the British Library site and other UK Academic resources. Stephens’ contemporaneous finds authors sharing their birth year with the Wikipedia page in question. Meanwhile Meehan’s bookmarklet will funnel you into relevant pages linked by VIAF at UCL’s Explore, and COPAC.
VIAF connections can also pave the way for new scholarly research. A team from Vienna University of Technology, released a paper that visualized Art History networks of Wikipedia, through VIAF IDs, and then ULAN. Here you can see the proportion Art History Subjects in Wikipedia, displayed on two dimensions derived from the ULAN connection: time and nationality.
Credit http://vsem.ec.tuwien.ac.at/wikiarthistory/
All of this is to say that VIAF data in English Wikipedia can as a very good ropebridge that allows for reuse, or recombination. The idea of a ropebridge is apt because the connection is somewhat shaky, at the moment it’s free text, semi-structured data that can be changed by anybody, but that doesn’t mean that the chasm isn’t being crossed.
Can you spot the weakness in all this collaboration though? We focused our first effort on English Language Wikipedia. The Germans, to their credit, have just as many VIAF IDs in their Wikipedia. The Italians copied the English Language data. However these separate efforts are not scalable to all 285 Wikipedias, nor does it allow all 285 Wikipedias to collaborate on the language-neutral VIAF Unique Identifiers.
Fortunately there is a solution, and that solution is Wikidata. Wikidata is first new Wikimedia Project since 2006, and will do three things. It will organize inter-language links into a central database (inter-language linking before was arduous and asymmetric). It will provide a central store of Semantic Data from the Wikipedia articles. And in the future it will be able to query that semantic data. Want to know more about Wikidata? Then look up Wikidata on Wikidata (obviously?!).
Now for a surprise – I’ve just finished migrating English Wikipedia’s VIAF data to Wikidata, and German, French, Italian, and Japanese datasets are in progress. (Code on Github). It takes about two weeks to inspect, clean, and copy the data over from each Wikipedia. I’ll post a full statistical breakdown once all the languages have finished. For now I’ll just say that the Wikidata VIAFbot is also migrating LCCN, GND, BNF, and SUDOC Identifiers as well as integrating for the first time ISNI IDs. At the time of this writing it records 750,000 edits and counting.
What does VIAF in Wikidata look like you ask? All pages about encyclopedic concepts are known as “Items” in Wikidata parlance, so lets inspect the item for Germaine Greer.
We first see all the Semantic Data Wikidata has about this topic. Each modicum of data is known as a “Claim” in Wikidata, is a triple, and is structured as [this page] [property] [value]. You can see that [Germaine Greer] [GND (read: "is a " according to the German National Library)] [Person], and that [Germaine Greer] [is of sex] [female]. You can also see here that she’s got a lot of identifiers associated with her thanks to VIAFbot, which has sourced where it found the original VIAF ID. Now lets draw our attention to the bottom of the page to understand the impact.
This Wikidata page is associated with articles in 48 other languages. Each of those articles can capitalize on the semantic data stored above. That’s the beauty of Wikidata. Which now means that all of the data reuse cases that previously only worked for the English language Wikipedia, will now work for all of them. Austrian researchers can inspect Art History biases of not just English Wikipedia, but of dansk, Ελληνικά, हिन्दी, interlingua, Runa Simi, 中文, etc. etc. That’s one of the starting reasons why it’s important to have Authority Control in Wikidata. There are of course more directions than one to travel across a ropebridge. Leading data-mules of bibliographic information across from VIAF into Wikidata is next.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Concentration, Diffusion, Centers & Flows
April 30, 2013 - 11:00amOur 2012 mega-regions analysis revealed a notable feature of the library landscape in North America: the apparent scarcity of print inventory varies significantly depending upon the scale at which it is assessed. It stands to reason, of course, that a title held by a single library in one locale may be held by many libraries in other places. What is more surprising is that scarcity – or what is more appropriately termed diffusion – is a characteristic that persists even at the scale of the mega-region. In every one of the 12 regions we examined, more than 75% of the print book titles are held by five or fewer libraries. Yet, comparing one mega-region to another, we found a high level of bilateral duplication: for example, more than 70% of the print book publications held in Cascadia – a mega-region encompassing urban centers in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia – are duplicated by library holdings in the NorCal region.
Bi-lateral duplication of print books in Cascadia and NorCal
Now it may be the high degree of integration that is a primary characteristic of mega-regions is also a factor in the diffusion of library resources within those same regions. Arguably, the strong networks of exchange and robust logistics infrastructure of mega-regions help to explain why we find such a low level of redundancy in library collections within those regions. Even without coordinated collection development plans, it may be that the ease with which resources (including library books) flow within mega-regions exercises some influence on library acquisitions. The incentive to acquire ‘just in case’ inventory will be less in a region where inter-lending networks are strong and it relatively easy to obtain copies from neighboring institutions, and this confidence in regional supply options may have a sort of invisible-hand effect that constrains redundant acquisitions.
This would suggest that the high degree of diffusion we see in regional collections – inventory distributed across a number of geographically distant institutions – is a characteristic of a ‘well-organized’ (though not deliberately engineered) library system. By contrast, library collections in institutions located outside of mega-regions tends to exhibit a higher degree of redundancy. This is partly a reflection of the large number of libraries that fall outside of the defined mega-regions – more than nine thousand individual OCLC institution symbols – but it seems likely that greater redundancy is needed to support demand in regions where ‘flows’ may be less efficient. Compare the average library holdings per title for collections held outside of US mega-regions (about 14) to the ratio of holdings per title within mega-regions, which ranges from 2 to 9, for the Phoenix metro area and Chi-Pitts respectively.
Of course, there are other factors at play: as a recent New York Times article showed, the geographic distribution of major research universities (and the libraries that serve them) is uneven – and regions with fewer research libraries will have a smaller concentration of rare or unique materials, compared to regions with many research intensive universities. Not surprisingly, the BosWash region, which encompasses a substantial part of the ARL membership, has a relatively low level of redundancy in print book holdings (about 7 holdings per title) simply because the area is home to many institutions with large collections of rare or distinctive materials.
ARL Membership Map (2013)
Conversely, in areas with a high density of public libraries — which generally hold large collections of popular classics and best-selling titles — we see higher levels of overall redundancy in collections. So one cannot infer that low levels of redundancy in library holdings across any region, whether organized against the mega-regions framework or anything else, are a reliable indicator of strong or weak flows. Other regional factors, like the distribution of research universities and public libraries are clearly important. It is interesting then to consider how the flow of library resources across regions may contribute to the organization of the library system as a whole. Regional infrastructure will affect flows — but flows will also shape infrastructure. Think, for example, of how the growth of rapid transit networks has transformed urban landscapes, encouraging the emergence of the sprawling metro areas that anchor mega-regions.
Lorcan Dempsey sometimes speaks of ‘library logistics’ and it is in this context that I have been thinking about the flow of library resources and more especially about the emergence of new hubs around which the library system is now being reconfigured. Thom Hickey’s recent experiments in programmatically identifying concentrations of material related to a particular topic or identity — what we’ve referred to as ‘centers data’ – provide a new way to think about how the library system is organized and how it is changing. It’s not clear if the existing centers reflect intentionally cultivated strengths in institutional holdings, or if they are merely accidents of history – an unsolicited donation of materials about a particular person, for instance.
In some cases, the association with known institutional centers of excellence seems evident: it is not surprising, for example, to find that the University of Pittsburgh has the largest collection of material by or about Gonzalo Rojas, a celebrated Chilean poet. Pitt has been a National Resource Center on Latin America for decades and it stands to reason they hold significant collections of Latin American literature. Would an expert in the field have predicted that Pitt, rather than the University of Texas (a distinguished center of Latin American studies), has the most comprehensive collection related to Rojas? Perhaps – I don’t have the domain knowledge to have an informed opinion about the likely location of the most comprehensive Latin American poetry collections in North America. Significantly, though, Pitt ranks within the top collections (by size) of works by related poets:
Gonzalo Rojas and related identities – University of Pittsburgh holdings ranked against other WorldCat libraries
As the figures here suggest, it is possible for a library to be a leading — or even the top-ranked– ‘center’ of resources related to particular identity or topic without holding a vast number of titles. This will obviously be true when the relevant oeuvre is limited: to hold 100% of a small published record (a handful of titles, let’s say) is still significant. What is more interesting is that the diffusion of library resources — the ‘scarcity’ that we find in institutional and within regional collections — effectively lowers the threshold for what constitutes excellence in institutional holdings. In the example of Gonzalo Rojas, for example, Pitt’s 48 titles amount to less than 40% of the published works associated with the related VIAF heading. Even so, this small collection is 75% larger (and 16% more comprehensive) than the related holdings at the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile — at least as they are reflected in WorldCat. This is, at least to me, somewhat surprising.
This raises the question of how centers or hubs are revealed in the information environment. Effective disclosure of collections that are distinctive not because of their rarity but because of their ‘excellence’ or completeness will be important if libraries are to be recognized as preferred hubs in the larger supply chain, where commercial providers are still dominant. Ideally, one would like to have relevant library suppliers revealed in the network at the point of need, in the flow of the researcher’s work – which is increasingly likely to be outside the library discovery environment. How could this be done? Where do library fulfillment options fit in the knowledge graph? Somewhere in the Wikipedia infobox? In Google’s info cards? Happily, greater minds than mine are working on this problem. Of one thing, at least, I’m certain: understanding and representing the relationships between identities and topics in institutional and in regional collections – understanding how different ‘centers’ are related – will lead to new insights about how the library system is, and will be, organized.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
We Want to Send You to SemTechBiz
April 29, 2013 - 2:35pm
SemTechBiz is a major conference for those who are using semantic web technologies like linked data, RDF, Schema.org, etc. It is being held June 2-5 in San Francisco and OCLC and LITA have teamed up to send a librarian there to share the good work that libraries are doing to produce and consume linked data.
We will pay the expenses of the selected individual to attend the conference where they will also be afforded a lightning talk slot to highlight their work for conference attendees. This is the first “Library Spotlight on Innovation” that we jointly developed with SemanticWeb.com, the producers of the conference. Richard Wallis, our Linked Data Evangelist, was instrumental in putting this together.
So are you doing something interesting with linked data? Or do you know of someone who is? If so, you can nominate yourself or someone else for this great opportunity. We want the broader world to know about how libraries are innovating with linked data.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: Next Steps?
April 19, 2013 - 12:12pm[On March 18th and 19th, 2013 OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries held a forum on MOOCs and Libraries. This is the sixth in a short series of postings on that event. You can read other postings on this topic in the archives, and check out all of the deliverable on the event page.]
For our MOOCs and Libraries event, it was important to come away with concrete of opportunities for librarians — hopefully now that we have a cohort of attendees (in person attendees, remote attendees, and those of you who have watched the videos, reviewed the Twitter stream, and read these summaries!) there are some positive and meaningful ways that librarians can engage with MOOCs. To help the end of the day on both Monday and Tuesday, my colleague Chrystie Hill led us in small group discussions. (We also tried to include the remote audience in the discussions, with mixed results).
The questions for discussion were:
On the last point, the small groups were asked to come up with their top three recommendations. Then as a whole, we heard all the “top three” from each table. Not surprisingly, there was quite a bit of overlap, and my colleague Dale Musselman nicely transcribed and organized the outcomes into 9 rough categories.
Of these, from my perspective, the things that every librarian can do is to take a MOOC, and contribute to the conversation by listening to others who have been invovled in MOOCs, and sharing information and experiences.
My thanks to Chrystie for structuring and facilitating this sessions, and to Dale for helping to organize the outcomes document.
You can take a look at the summary document and also the individual recommendations as contributed.
You can also watch the video for even more detail.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
Subsidence and uplift – the library landscape
April 18, 2013 - 9:00am
Approximate location of maximum subsidence in the United States.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gwsanjoaquin.jpg
There’s been a lot of attention to geologic subsidence of late, what with all the sinkholes opening up in Florida, Louisiana and other places. Here in California, we are more often concerned with the gradual change in ground level due to the draining of aquifers that support large-scale farming. From year to year, the difference in ground level may be nearly imperceptible but over the space of a few decades the landscape has been radically transformed.
The subsidence metaphor was on my mind recently, as I was looking over some data compiled by my colleague Thom Hickey, documenting the usage of headings (subjects and names) in WorldCat. OCLC Research has done quite a lot of work exploring new approaches to managing subject and name authorities, notably in VIAF and FAST. I was interested to see how Thom’s data might be used to measure change — uplift and subsidence — in the library landscape. By computing the frequency with which FAST and VIAF headings occur in institutional collections cataloged in WorldCat, one can identify which libraries hold the most materials related to particular topics, places and people. And this in turn provides a measure of the relative distinctiveness of library collections, judged not in terms of the ‘rarity’ of holdings but rather by the concentration of related content.
It seemed to me that Thom’s data might have something interesting to say about how the emergence of large-scale digitized book aggregations – HathiTrust, Google Books, etc — is altering the library environment. It stands to reason that as these large hubs begin to consolidate content sourced from libraries (and, in Google’s case, publishers), they will displace traditional library ‘centers of excellence’ in some subject areas. Those who remember the DLF Aquifer project will recall that the initial prototype was designed to pool digitized resources in a given subject area (initially American History, later narrowed to Abraham Lincoln and the US Civil War). In the very large aggregations of HathiTrust and GoogleBooks, subject specialization has emerged more gradually. There has not been much public attention to measuring the scope of subject-based collections within those aggregations, nor to benchmarking them against existing institutional holdings.*
The FAST and VIAF centers data provide evidence of both subsidence and uplift in the current collections environment — that is, shifts in centers of excellence as measured by scope of subject based holdings. The ‘re-leveling’ that has been wrought in just a few years of large-scale digitization is already significant. Digital aggregations have, by design or accident, emerged as important subject repositories that rival and even outrank some of the largest institutional libraries in WorldCat.
For instance, HathiTrust, an organization not yet five years old, already holds the greatest concentration of titles on the topic of marine biology, surpassing the Library of Congress as well as two major research universities with world-class oceanography programs.
In the case of Marine biology, the difference between the number of titles held by HathiTrust and the Library of Congress is not very large — fewer than 200 titles. But in other instances, the relative subsidence of traditional centers of excellence is more dramatic. For instance, Google Books substantially outranks several major research libraries in holdings related to Russian periodicals (journals, newspapers and the like).
This represents an important change in the library system, with monumental old hubs being progressively overshadowed by new collections that are produced not by the slow accretion of library acquisitions but by large-scale digitization and (re)aggregation. It provides a compelling illustration of how Web-scale content aggregations are altering the library operating environment. In the case of HathiTrust especially, this disruption can (and I think should) be seen as a positive change: it enables libraries to rethink traditional, institution-scale collection management and stewardship — a topic we examined in our Cloud-sourcing Research Collections report some years ago.
Using Thom’s ‘centers’ data, we can identify hundreds of topics and identities for which HathiTrust offers better coverage than any other library in WorldCat. Here a few topics in which the Digital Library distinguishes itself:
And a few of the personal names for which its coverage is unrivaled:
Interestingly, the other top-ranked collections (by size) for these same subjects and identities are not always the source of HathiTrust’s richness. One might have anticipated that Hathi’s leadership was simply a by-product of aggregating content from existing centers of excellence, but in fact Hathi has developed unexpected strengths by aggregating at a very large scale from a diverse pool of contributors. For example, Harvard University and the University of Michigan each hold sizable collections of works by the poet Jean Ingelow; yet, the richness of Hathi’s Ingelow collection is mostly due to contributions from campus libraries in the University of California system.
The FAST and VIAF ‘centers’ data provide a fascinating new vantage point on the changing collections landscape. We’ll be looking at ways to integrate it into ongoing research projects, including the mega-regions work, where we hope it can help us detect regional collecting trends that might inform shared stewardship priorities.
*Note: HathiTrust provides a nice visualizations and a list of subject areas in the Digital Library, based on Library of Congress classification numbers. These provide a good overview of subject-based coverage but without reference to comparable coverage in other libraries. It is generally known that Google is selective with respect to identifying library partners, but I’m not aware of any public documentation related to a specific collection development strategy. Their aim, famously, is to provide comprehensive coverage of the world’s books, not to develop excellence in any given subject area.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: Who Are the Masses? A View of the Audience
April 17, 2013 - 10:58am[This is the fifth in a short series on the forum on MOOCs and Libraries held by OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, March 18th and 19th, 2013. Look back to the archives for earlier posting on this topic]
MOOC Audiences by *s@lly*, on Flickr, cc-by-nc
We wrapped up the content portion of our meeting by reflecting on the audience for MOOCs (or what we know about participants), and also considering the audience through the lens of public libraries (which I admit, I don’t think about a lot of the time, except when I’m acting as a patron). I find the role (or potential role) for public libraries in MOOCs to be very exciting, and I think you’ll see why if you read the summary or watch the video of Margaret Todd’s talk.
We heard first from Howard Lurie (Vice President, Content Development, edX), who said he was from the “other platform.” (Although we tried to balance the program, many of the presenters were from “Coursera” institutions — I don’t think the platform matters all that much when talking about the library’s role in MOOCs, but there you have it.) According to Lurie, MOOCs provide an opportunity to look at learning/pedogogy through the lens of “big data” gathered during course implementation. Even with “low” completion rates the numbers are still quite high. Taking one edX class as an example (6.002x, Circuits and Electronics): 154,763 registered for the class; 26,349 tried the first problem set; 10,547 took the mid term; 9,318 passed the mid term; 8,240 took the final exam; 7,157 received certification. This is a lot of data to analyize that could help improve teaching — it would take many years of iterating a class in a traditional setting to get to those numbers (and of course, Audrey Watters would ask as she did in an excellent talk at WebWise, “Whose educational data is it?”) As with many presentations on MOOCs I’ve heard recently, Lurie highlighted “global stories” reflecting exposure to a topic for those who might not have had the opportunity otherwise (such as the Pakistani participant who said “this course was the most important experience in my life” One role for MOOCs might be to gather stories of learners around the world, and help universities identify talent.
Next we heard from Deirdre Woods (Interim Executive Director, Open Learning Initiative, University of Pennsylvania) who joked that in this environment, being around for a number of months makes you an old timer. Penn’s is in the open learning business because it’s a public good, and also because it’s good for Penn — online courses provides prospective students a taste of what they might expect from the college before they make a commitment. It’s also a good way to stay in touch with alumni. Woods shared that the faculty who have taught MOOCs acknowledge that it’s a huge undertaking but all say they would do it again. Part of the satisfaction? Faculty members reach more people in one course than in entire career. A little more about participants demographics: the majority of participants in Penn MOOCs were working in full time positions. 65% are male (they aren’t sure why). 30% of participants hang in through the duration of the course, but don’t do assignments.
Finally, we heard from Margaret Donnellan Todd (County Librarian, County of Los Angeles Public Library). Right now, LACoPL is loved and trusted by the community; as evidence of this, county residents recently voted to increase library funding. Not content to rest of their laurels, LACoPL has identified online relevance as an important component of their strategic plan. And the library has a challenge in terms of serving an educational shortfall in their community. Right now high school dropout rates are at about 40%, and community college graduation rates are low. Higher education in California (as elsewhere) is increasingly squeezed, and the option to go to community college in order to catch up, is no longer an option for all. All of these factors will lead to a decline in a local qualified workforce. With fewer and fewer options, LACoPL has begun to see itself as a center of learning, and positioning itself to support very practical and real educational educational needs. Public libraries excel at connecting people to services, partners, and peers. At an academic institution, MOOCs are an extension of existing online presence; in public libraries, MOOCs (and support for those taking MOOCs) may be an extension of their broad public education mission. Todd described how LACoPL has experimented with offering course through Ed2Go — even with little promotion, these courses have been very popular. What might be possible if public libraries extended their online courses, or worked with material being produced in MOOCs? One desire expressed by participants in MOOCs has been a need for a common space to come together with others taking the same class. Why not the public library as that space?
N.B. You may have noticed that in these postings, I purposefully am referring to those who take MOOCs as “participants” and not “students.” That’s a purposeful choice on my part. I don’t think we know enough about who is taking MOOCs and why to label them as students yet.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: New Opportunities for Librarians
April 16, 2013 - 11:20am[This is the fourth posting in a short series on the forum on MOOCs and Libraries held by OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, March 18th and 19th, 2013.]
This, alongside the copyright session, was the most meaty in terms of seeing where libraries are currently connecting with MOOCs — as I learned during my investigations, there are a lot of people with opinions about MOOCs and libraries, but not many folks with hands on experience. This session focused on where library research skills fit into MOOCs, where that might take us.
The panel was moderated by Marjorie Hassen (Director of Teaching, Research, and Learning Services, University of Pennsylvania Libraries) with participation by Sarah Bordac (Head, Instructional Design, Brown University), Jennifer Dorner (Head, Instruction and User Services, University of California Berkeley), and Lynne O’Brien (Director of Academic Technology and Instructional Services, Duke University). You can watch the video and / or read my summary of the event below.
This panel featured perspectives from both Coursera (Duke and Brown) and edX (UC Berkeley) institutions, as well as from librarians who have been involved with a number of courses (Duke) to those who are still preparing for launch day (Brown). For those who have been in the game or on the sidelines, “MOOCs create the perfect storm for new ways of thinking about things” quipped O’Brien. And if people go to MOOCs to learn, it’s critical for libraries to be involved. The question is, what is the right level of support, and where to invest? As a first steps, the pedagogical needs for a course need to be outlined before you can judge what the role of the libraries is, and where library support makes sense. For example, at Berkeley, courses on math and computer science don’t have library related learning objectives. A good exercise for those at academic institutions might be to scan the course catalog and ask what library support is currently offered for each course — in an online environment, expect support to be similar. Is the main focus of support given to faculty who are planning the course, or to participants who are taking the course? For those who are taking courses, librarians may serve a role that’s more like an information guide rather than an information provider.
Certainly looking anew at teaching creates opportunities for cross campus teams. At Brown University (and elsewhere), the library is involved in a number of these teams, which positions the library strategically and helps the library act in a “connector” role. At some institutions, such as UC Berkeley, online learning has not been centrally coordinated, which allows for creativity in course development but makes it difficult for the library to get involved.
Dorner shared information about two library-based edX groups, one studying “content accessibility” (copyright) and another looking at “research skills.” Both groups will issue reports and recommendations, and those reports will be shared.
Other observations:
Additional resources:
Study of how MOOC participants (in one course) went about finding relevant information resources (via Eleni Zazani). A small sample size, but I think this gives some indications of where students are headed.
A thorough analysis of a MOOC, the report on Duke’s Bioelectricity course — this is the most through reporting out from a course I’ve seen to date.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: Production and Pedagogy
April 15, 2013 - 10:01am[OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries held a forum on MOOCs and Libraries on March 18th and 19th, 2013. This is the third in a short series on that event.]
One of the great advantages to partnering with the University of Pennsylvania on this event is that they have been through several rounds of course production, so they know the ropes. And even though this event focused on MOOCs and libraries, we did think it would be good for the audience to learn a little bit about course production. Like most of our attendees, I have no experience with MOOC production (although I have taken three MOOCs — I stop at nothing in my quest to bring you information!). Having had some experience on the student or participant side, it was great to glimpse behind the curtain.
I’ll summarize this session below, but here’s my advice for learning more if most of what you’ve done is read about MOOCs in the press. Take a class or two (while you do it, try to think about the role of the library in relationship to the learning objectives for the class). And watch this session to learn a little more about the variety of production styles, and what goes into making a MOOC.
The panel was expertly moderated by Bruce Lenthall (Director of Center for Teaching and Learning) and included participation by Christian Terwiesch (Wharton School Faculty), Jackie Candido (Online Learning & Digital Engagement, School of Arts and Sciences), Amy Bennett (Penn Open Learning), and Anna Delaney (Perelman School of Medicine).
Before the panel discussion Terwiesch spoke briefly about his experience teaching a Coursera class called “Introduction to Operations Management” that is an adaptation of a course he has been teaching for some time at the Wharton School. From his perspective, the economics of MOOCs are simple: more learning with the same resources. He wants everyone to think about process management principles, in order to make life better, and MOOCs are a great way to do that. (I have to admit having heard him speak passionately about his class, I’ve rashly signed up to take it — maybe some of you will, too?)
The panel offered advice and perspectives on production, covering some basics. The ideal timeline for production is about six months: build, promote, enroll (although it can be done in less time). MOOCs are more than just a professor in a video frame — they need instruction design. Streamlining course content is critical with MOOCs — it doesn’t work to take an existing class and plug it into a MOOC. Faculty content is the most obvious component but it’s not all. In an online environment, clear written communication is key. Having a good microphone and a way to engage with the students (forum, blog, wiki, but something that will work at scale!) are two very critical components. Be on guard against technical gotchas. Pay attention to small details; remember that once the material is out, it’s out!
There was an interesting thread around “success” — what are measurements to know when you are there? Returning to the theme for copyright, panelists suggested that “it depends!” Part of this is related to goals set by faculty for students, and therefore is a mater of personal style and preferences. Terwiesch suggested that success is changing what you do for the better. The right team (which right now is people doing work on top of their regular job, with no additional funding) is critical for success. Most good team members are described as doing the work because they are dedicated and passionate (and I would add, they probably are not intimidated by experimentation). The question of completion rates as a measure of success came up, and panelists (and others) pushed back on this: it’s not appropriate to assess completion of a MOOC with the same metrics used with traditional classrooms or even with a “traditional online course” (I love this phrase!).
The panelists also shared what they thought might be key roles for libraries. One area highlighted was organizing and making sense of information contributed by participants; in the Terwiesch course, there was a whole range of user generated content on process management. The suggestion of this type of curation on a massive scale got pushback from the audience, as did the idea of having embedded librarians (“with thousands of students, would we have enough staff?”). Other ideas seemed more attainable: providing pointers to open resources for faculty, and pointer to online communities and other resources for students (perhaps in a dedicated discussion thread). Helping to educate course TAs about resources for to students. Helping to structure discussion forums ahead of time (speaking from personal experience, these can be very wild and woolly).
In summary, all of the panelists conveyed their enthusiasm about MOOCs. Despite relatively low levels of completion, they were energized by the large numbers of highly engaged. In the end, it’s not so much about massiveness, but about human connection and excitement that can be generated, and the community that can be formed.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: Copyright, Licensing, Open Access
April 11, 2013 - 10:15am[OCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries held a forum on MOOCs and Libraries on March 18th and 19th. This is the second post in a short series on that event.]
As I learned from my interviews from librarians who are engaging with MOOCs, one of the main points of engagement for libraries (in fact, sometimes the only point of engagement!) is around licensing and clearing copyright for materials used in courses, or giving advice to others on these topics. We were fortunate to attract three excellent speakers on this topic: Kevin Smith (Scholarly Communications Officer, Duke University), Kenny Crews (Director, Copyright Advisory Office, Columbia University), and Kyle K. Courtney (Manager of Faculty Research and Scholarship, Harvard Law School). It was great that we had representation from both Coursera and edX partner institutions. I am also grateful to Brandon Butler (Director of Public Policy Initiatives, Association of Research Libraries) for agreeing to moderate the session.
The group opted to cover the content in a Q & A format, with Butler pitching questions to the panelists. The group met once, briefly, by phone ahead of the meeting, but the smooth and easy exchange made it seem as if they has been working on their presentation for a much longer period of time. Of course the discussion was filled with copyright favorites, like “it depends,” but it was relatively light on the jargon. The panel was not only enjoyable, but following the session, I felt considerably more cheerful about issues around MOOCs and intellectual property. My somewhat out-of-order summary is below, but I commend the video to you — I’m tempted to call it “best of show,” because I had so many people tell me that they were surprised at how much they enjoyed it!
Butler started the session by highlighting that putting materials online brings issues around copyright to the forefront, making it a high stakes area for libraries. However, avoiding copyright issues altogether is also an area of risk for libraries; if MOOCs represent a cornerstone in online learning, where are the (mostly in-copyright and licensed) resources that libraries steward? The conversation flowed around several themes: permissions and licensing, fair use, linking, who owns the material created in MOOCs, open access, and continued advocacy.
Permissions and licensing:
Although it’s a very basic first step, reading and understanding licences (and what they do and not allow) is key, since use depends on what the license says. If possible future agreements should allow for the use of materials in MOOCs. Because of the importance of agreements, librarians who deal with licensing may become, according to Crews, “the most important person in the building.” If use is not covered under a licence, request permission. Don’t be shocked if you don’t get an answer. At Duke, experiences with getting permissions quite varied — most often there is no response. Sometimes you get a yes, other times an ask for a big fee. Try to appeal to the “marketing opportunity” inherent in a course with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of eyeballs. Dealing with permissions and licensing is something that edX institutions generally try to avoid, relying instead on fair use and open resources, Courtney explained,
Fair use:
Smith started with a note of caution on fair use; copyrighted materials should be used with care especially because of the large online audience, and use should be clearly tied to criticism and commentary, or is being used in a way that could be considered transformative. However, he firmly reinforced that it’s important to push on fair use because in this environment, it’s impractical not to. Panelists offered words of caution and instruction: it’s important to work with faculty and others on the production team to make sure that embedded materials are only what’s needed for the specific pedagogical purpose. As an example, if you are referring to a Monty Python film, use only the small bit that’s being commented on, and link out to an authorized version of the video on YouTube or elsewhere. Kevin Smith on MOOC fair use of Monty Python video: Linked to authorized YouTube copy, copied small bits specifically commented on. Which brings me to…
Linking:
This surprised me and is both a practical and inventive copyright workaround. If you can’t get permission or make a fair use case. Provide a link to materials online elsewhere. If you can’t embed the materials, cite them and leave students to find them on their own.
Who owns the MOOC?:
This can be a complicated question, and of course some of this depends on the agreement with the platform partner. Depending on your campus environment, work may be considered “work for hire,” with copyright held by the university. In courses with complicated production you may have many creators. Best practice would be to understand the terms, bring all relevant players together, and get written, signed agreements in order to have clear lines around who owns MOOC content.
Open access:
Working with faculty around these complex issues can help to reinforce the central importance of convincing faculty to retain their copyright, and to take charge in being “good stewards” of their own intellectual property. And of course if it’s an open, you can ask faculty who teach MOOCs to make their materials open access. (I will add a personal observation that I don’t believe that MOOCs are likely to be the turning point with faculty in regards to copyright or open access issues — I think that is more likely to happen due to pressure in their individual disciplines, but that’s just a hunch.)
Advocacy:
Remember that libraries are involved in both “risk mitigation and education maximization.” Crews said, if you rely on fair use, you will sometimes need to say “no” to faculty, but we can also help find suitable replacement content. Librarians can play an important role in not only giving fair use guidance and seek permissions, but also recommend public domain or openly licensed resources that could be freely used. And of course, sharing information with one another is a form of advocacy.
Some useful, additional tidbits:
Some additional resources:
The ARL Code of Best Practices in Fair Use is an excellent resource. So is the Issue Brief on MOOCs (October 2012). Smith and Crews both have blogs that are worth following if you are interested in tracking IP/library issues. Courtny also has launched a blog recently, so tune in there as well.
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff
MOOCs and Libraries: Introduction
April 9, 2013 - 6:46pmOCLC and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries held a forum on MOOCs and Libraries on March 18th and 19th. This is the first post in a short series on that event. You can also check out the event page for links to videos, presenters’ slides, and more!
It’s been a few weeks, but it still feels like I’m catching my breath following our well attended (and I think successful!) forum, MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge? This event was an attempt to get beyond the plethora of what I’d call “MOOC 101″ and instead focus on the issues facing libraries that are engaging or may soon be engaging with MOOCs. I was fortunate to be tasked with such an engaging topic, and doubly fortunate to team up with Martha Brogan at the University of Pennsylvania and her colleagues (Anuradha Vedantham, Shawn Martin, and Marjorie Hassen) — the University of Pennsylvania Libraries were perfect partners because they haven’t just been thinking about MOOCs, they have been actively engaged with all aspects of MOOCs from planning, to production, to assessment. U. Penn was an early implementer on the Coursera platform, and have now been through several course cycles. I was also fortunate to work with my colleague Chrystie Hill, who lead the charge in bringing public library voices into the event. I was also fortunate, in event planning, to be able to draw upon the expertise resident in the OCLC Research Library Partnership — in November of 2012, I knew little more about MOOCs than what was covered in the popular press. I was educated by colleagues who are working in the field, who spoke from a basis of knowledge and experience, and who were willing to share with me via phone conversations and emails during December and January (my findings are summarized in an earlier post, MOOCs and Libraries: a look at the landscape).
We had a sell out crowd of 125 people attend in person and record breaking online attendance of over 400 (hardly MOOC like, but for sustained attention from afar, it’s very good). We were also fortunate to have a very strong Twitter stream, with contributions from both in person and remote attendees, which helped to “amplify” the event. And we have a record of the meeting in the recorded video (which you may enjoy watching!). Still, I think it’s important to have a summary of the meeting and some notable outcomes. I hope that some of you who attended (or who are able to watch the videos) will join in the conversation. And keep the conversation going by using the hash #mooclib when blogging or Tweeting on this topic.
Carton Rogers, Vice Provost & Director of Penn Libraries, and Ed Rock, Provost and Director of Open Course Initiatives, helped to set the scene for the group. Rogers underscored the confluence of support that the Penn Libraries provide to support learning — library resources, repository services, and courseware support. Deep engagement with Penn’s MOOC efforts was a natural next step for the library, and led to Penn’s hosting this first-of-a-kind meeting. Rock expanded on this, addressing, “Why MOOCs, why Penn, why now?”
The internet, Rock asserted, is now a place of learning so naturally one expects to find the university there. However, there is no one cookie cutter model for how universities engage with MOOCs — each institution needs to think out the role of MOOCs in their own framework. It’s already clear, from the Penn experience, that engaging with MOOCs has altered how people think about teaching — and this is a good thing. They’ve also seen that MOOCs can be used as an intervention in public discourse (a good example of this is the Penn course on vaccines). Rock also emphasized the democratic nature of MOOCs, with participants from residents in assisted living facilities, to autistic children, these courses are open to all ages and stages. He also speculated a bit about the role of the MOOC in a residential college setting — successful completion of a course that is eligible may be treated like an AP course — there is already a system for this in place. Or, a MOOC may be useful in helping students prepare for and test out of gateway classes.
Jim Michalko, Vice President OCLC Research (and a self confessed MOOC virgin), shared some context about MOOCs and online learning; we’ve been here before — or have we? What we have definitely seen before is the media frenzy around online learning or even distance learning — he referenced correspondence courses, Fathom, and Khan Academy, all of which are part of the heritage of what he called “the big three”: Udacity, EdX and Coursera which only launched a year ago. However, this time may well be different — Michalko cited Bill Bowen’s The ‘Cost Disease’
in Higher Education: Is Technology the Answer? as evidence of a “broken business model,” leaving institutions ripe for disruption (à la Clayton Christensen).
In closing he asked some pointed questions: “what business are we in?” “where is the venue for elite education online?” “are institutions engaging in a prestige arms race?” Finally, he predicted a platform war with MOOCs: “not everyone’s going to win.”
My presentation picked up where Jim left off: in all of this, where is the library? I presented findings from my research (which I have summarized previously): libraries are engaging in issues around copyright and IP, and are actively looking to see how to appropriately embed library services and research skills into these new and evoloving environments. Encouragingly, some libraries are part of the core teams being formed on campus which are planning and executing on MOOCs — these partnerships are vital, especially if MOOCs are seen as important to the campus. To be blunt, if it’s politically important, libraries need to be there. I also touched on the exciting ways that public libraries are thinking about MOOCs — not necessarily from the production side, but from the perspective of how these educational tools may fill a need for the diverse audiences they serve.
MOOCs (and online education) is a space in which things are evolving quite rapidly. I think it’s too soon for best practices, or declarations of success or failure. I think it’s a great time for experimentation, for trying things (and strategic abandonment!). This is also a perfect time to share the results of experiments. We are excited that this meeting was a step in that direction, and an important opportunity to share information with one another. But we’re not done yet — we’re at the beginning, not the end.
Next up, I’ll be summarizing the session on copyright, licensing and open access, so stay tuned!
Categories: Museum [Tech] Blogs + Stuff